


Pray, Under This Carving Stone I Will Not Let You Go

by CaptainLordAuditor



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Adult Dick Grayson, Alternate Universe - 1940s, Batcest, Canon typical character death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I guess you can also read him as Romani here, Jewish Bruce Wayne, Jewish Dick Grayson, Kinda, Pre-Relationship, but he's not really intended to be he is definitely Jewish, in my head this takes place in exactly 1940 do with that what you will, look you have to squint REALLY HARD to see the slash it might only be there in my head, oblique references to the holocaust, prebrudick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24043810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainLordAuditor/pseuds/CaptainLordAuditor
Summary: He notices right away when the man comes up to stand behind him, but he doesn’t say anything until the grave is filled and they’re standing by two heaps of dirt, completely alone.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	Pray, Under This Carving Stone I Will Not Let You Go

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Ashkelon" by Tasseomancy

He stands by their graves, watching as the gravediggers fill the rest of the grave in, long after everyone else has left. He notices right away when the man comes up to stand behind him, but he doesn’t say anything until the grave is filled and they’re standing by two heaps of dirt, completely alone.

“I’m - I hope their memories are a blessing.”

His heart stops at the familiar phrase, spoken in an unfamiliar tongue. He feels, speaking English, like how this man seems to feel speaking the phrase, stumbling around in an unknown darkness, blind, with only the awkward, half remembered guidings of memory. He takes a deep breath to try and steady himself, and finds himself dry sobbing, instead. The bitter November air stings his face and numbs his hands. He’s glad to feel  _ something. _

There’s a hand on his shoulder, warm and heavy. He looks first at it, then at the man - at the creature, really - it belongs to. It is dressed entirely in black - they both are - white is for the dead and the dead alone - it is dressed entirely in black, but not in anything like he has ever seen before. He thinks at first that it is Death himself, come to take him or give him an apology, then that it is a sheyd or a ghost attempting to frighten him from the graveyard. 

But as he looks at the figure in the setting sunlight he sees it is only a man, a performer like himself, albeit one who works in fright. This strange man does his performance well - the best he has ever seen - how Tateh would love to take apart this act - this strange man does his performance well, seeming to be made of shadow itself, with horns like a goyische devil’s and eyes a flat white. His cloak parts enough to let his hand through, and underneath it he can see gray and a flash of yellow.

He thinks he knows who this is. He’d figured it for a legend here, the kind of thing Haley liked to keep tabs on to steal later, like his monkey-stitched mermaids. Gotham is full of those legends; poisonous plant women and people with two faces; owlmen, a man that moved and laughed like a fox, a woman with the head of a cat. More than usual, maybe, even for a city this old; it figures that one of them is true.

“If there's anything I can do-”

“There isn’t.” He looks back at the grave. He doesn’t know how he managed to speak through his closing up throat, let alone manage the too-far-forward sounds of English. “There’s nothing.”

The Bat is silent a moment. “It wasn’t an accident. If it helps, I can-”

“It doesn't.” His voice is hard, even to him. He takes another deep breath. “They were the last ones, you know that? The rest of us are all back in Germany.”

The Bat doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing he can say, really. Neither of them knows what awaits the rest of his family in Germany, only that whatever it is, it’s not pleasant. Ghettoes, he’s pretty sure, but beyond that, doesn’t know. He left three years ago, and has no plans to return.

He values his freedom.

But now he’s tied to Gotham. It’s better, he supposes, than any other place he could be tied to. It has living legends, if nothing else. He glances back at the Bat. The Bat is unreadable. He looks back at the grave.

“There is a growing faction that believes America should join them.”

He clenches his fists. “If you’re telling me to leave-”

“No.” The Bat pulls his hand off of his shoulder and offers it to him. “I am offering you a choice.”


End file.
